Treasure That Lasts | Matthew 6:19-24

You're listening to the Bible Guys, a podcast where a

couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun in

practical ways. Hey, everybody, welcome to the Bible Guys. I'm Chris,

this is Jeff, and we are here to.

Serve you and to make it fun and practical. Yes, well,

that's what it says we're all about. That is our tagline.

We are nothing if we're not fun or practical.

That that opening video, if you're watching by video, that

opening video was shot how long ago? Two and a

half years ago?

Oh years and years ago? No more than two and

a half it was yeah, four years ago maybe.

Yeah, that's that's a pretty outdated video.

Like a jillion episodes ago.

Yeah. Yeah, we need to we need to put some

effort into updating.

Think we'll get to our we'll get to our thousandth

episode this year. Oh wily, Yeah in twenty twenty six.

Okay, yeah, that's fun.

Well, hey, what is the one? What's our game today?

What is she saying? Oh?

Here it is this is today. We're talking about treasure

that lasts. So because of that DESIREE asked us, She said,

ask GPT what fun it can come up with? Regarding

finding treasure.

So I love this. So I am a little bit

of a treasure hunt kind of fiend. So I watched

shows about treasure hunting and all that kind stuff. Do

you do this? I've seen some yeah, yeah, So here's

all I did. Chet GBT. I just asked what's the

best treasure hunt that Chris Zarba and I could go

on right now? And it says love this question. If

you and Chris want a real world adventure with mystery puzzles,

hiking history, and a legit treasure hunt vibe, here are

the best options, ranked by how epic the experience will feel,

not just the prize. So the first one, and I

told you this right before we started it mentions Fenn's treasure.

So Fenn was an art dealer, and this is true,

all true. About fifteen years ago he hit a treasure

worth millions of dollars in the in the out in

nature north of Santa Fe, in the rocky mountain somewhere,

and then he wrote a poem. He had all the

clues in it, thousands and hundreds of thousands of people

search it wound up making a Good America and the

Today Show and all this kind of stuff, and just

what about two years ago a guy from Michigan found

the treasure. It's not any Well, then another guy hid

another treasure in the spirit of Fenn's Treasure, and you

can get that online on Netflix right now. There's a treasure.

It's a show called The Golden Greed or something, and

one of the guys on that show hit a new

treasure and it just was released. All the clues were

put out in March of twenty twenty five. So I

think that'd be fun. It's all out in nature, it's

all the clues are pretty transparent clues. You just got

to figure out how to start.

I would imagine you'd have to be on that hunt

for months and months and months.

Well, the guy that found it from Michigan found Fenn's

Treasure from Michigan. He did most of his research online

and then just went to it. What yeah, yeah, yeah,

So he had done a little bit of scouting and working,

but mostly he figured out where it was just doing

the work online and then then went to it. Yeah,

this is kind of neat. Anyways, that's kind of neat, right,

And and here's why it says it's perfect for us,

you and me, outdoor adventure plus rugged landscapes, deep symbolism

and the story behind it, and you can retrace all

these routes, you meet people who are obsessed with it,

which you would love that part of it. There's endless

YouTube and forms to decode all the clues and this

had turn into a spiritual explorer journey, not just a hunt.

So that's good, huh. And then it tells us to

pick a region and get started. So this is very

Bible guys meets Indiana.

Jones, which is right up your alley.

That's exactly that's my life.

Yeah, right right.

And then the other one is said we could try

is the Oak Island Mystery. That's kind of neat. It's

but I think it's played out in that the brothers

that are doing all the search, they're also from Michigan,

from Traverse City, and they own most of Oak Island

now and so they've dug it all up. So that'd

be hard for us to be a part of it.

But that's kind of neat. If you have watch it,

Oak Island is on was it Discovery Channel or whatever,

the Curse of oconn h. Yeah, those guys are from Michigan.

But there's another one, and I forgot about this. It

is called the Secret Byron Priest buried twelve treasures in

twelve different cities, and he had these pictures drawn that

had all the clues, and then he wrote a poem

to supplement the clues. And only three of the twelve

treasures have been found.

And how long ago was this buried?

This would have been in the eighties. He hid in

the eighties.

Oh yeah, so these aren't being found.

Yeah, the only ones that had been found so far

is oh yeah, it says we're here only three. So

I think the only ones that had been found is

one in Massachusetts near Boston, one in Chicago, and one

in Cleveland. But there's still Montreal, San Francisco, Charleston, Saint Augustine,

there's these treasures hidden all around the country. Well, and

again it's poems and pictures. So this says, go all

in for a few days, like Sherlock Holmes and backpacks.

So maybe we should do one of those in the treasure.

How much of the treasure's worth this twelve or the

nine remaining.

Yeah, they're not. They're not at the same level as

as like Fends Treasure or this new treasure that was

recently put out. But yeah, it's uh, it's supposed to

be worth hundreds of thousands dollars a piece.

Oh, that'd be nice.

The boys there were it was the first one found,

was in Chicago, in Grant Park in Chicago, and it

was three teenage boys figured it out and they got

some really big gems that translated into pretty good money.

Wow in neat. Well, I'll tell you what.

Let's let's let's take four or five months off a

hair to hurt.

Do I want to do it? Yes, I want to

do it. I just don't think that we'll be able

to do it. I mean think about you have what

kind of time you'd have to have. Yeah, it's sort

of a unique spot to be in, right.

Watch that, Watch that documentary Golden Greed. Yeah, yeah, and

you'll see the kind of people who have time for

this kind of Yeah.

Yeah, I bet it's like uh, it's like, uh, you

ever see National Treasure where John.

Voyce is one of my favorite movies, is it?

Where John Void is the dad and he goes, don't

you see just one clue? It's designed to lead you

to the next clue in the next clue. Then they

finally find those writings and there's the lemon. Remember the lemon,

and he's like and he's like, uh, he's like, oh yeah, okay.

He was excited about it, but then he find out

it was the Declaration of Independence whatever.

He stole the Declaration of Independence.

Yep.

It's so funny, dude, it's so funny.

Here's a good movie.

Well, hey, talking about treasure.

Yeah.

So we've been in Matthew chapter five, yeah, and reading

the Beatitudes and Jesus said, Blessed are those who hunger

and thirst after justice or after righteousness, for they will

be satisfied or they will be filled. And we've we've

been unpacking it. Yesterday we talked about Jesus said, unless

your righteousness is better than the Pharisees, you're never gonna

make it the kingdom. And what he was highlighting was

effect that we can't get it on our own righteousness.

We have to have Jesus pay the way. Right. Well,

then here's another one then, and it's talking about priorities,

quite honestly, and so in Matthew chapter six, verse nineteen,

this is talking about that hunger and thirst, that desire

of your soul. He says, don't store up treasures here

on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them,

where thieves break in and steel. Store your treasures in heaven,

where moths can and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do

not break in and steel. Wherever your treasure is, they're

the desires of your heart will be also. And are

we reading all the way to verse twenty four?

Right? Yeah? Four.

Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for

your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body

is filled with the light. But when your eye is unhealthy,

your whole body is filled with the darkness. And if

the light you think you have is actually darkness, how

deep that darkness is. No one can serve two masters,

for you will hate one and love the other. You'll

be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot

serve God and be enslaved to money. And so the

tie in to the idea of hungering and thirsting for

righteousness is directly the opposite, the opposite of us desiring

God is almost always desiring stuff. Right, So it's either

I worship myself, I worship God, or I worship life

and stuff, right, And so he's really taking us on

with regard to our other major priority other than God, well,

it's usually stuff and money.

One of the best comments I've ever heard in my

ministry is people said, the reason why Jesus talked ten

times more about money and stuff is because God knew

that that was going to be the chief competitor for

our affections, right, And it's true and everybody knows it, right.

I mean, you know, if we run the risk of

putting something before God, chances are it's going to be

you know, money and stuff, which is why Jesus points

it out.

Well, he knows that this is our greatest appetite right right, yep,

our greatest appetite that competes against our appetite with God

is money and stuff. And it's because, for a few reasons,

we think that money can bring us satisfaction. We think

it can bring us security, We think it can bring

us status and acceptance.

But it does all those to some degree, and.

Fun and all these things. And so what happens is

this longing that we have, this thirst in us, this

hunger in us, we're trying to satisfy it with money.

And what's the guy who made the the the richest

man in the world at the time, back in the thirties,

for Howard Hughes. Howard Hughes when he died. Before he died,

he had become a recluse. He was afraid of people,

he was afraid of disease, he was terrified of dying,

and he became really an odd duck. But a reporter

interviewed him and asked him, mister Hughes, how much is enough?

And he supposedly he said, one more dollar? One more

dollar isn't He was at the time the richest man

on the planet, and he was saying, one more dollar

will be enough.

By the way, when he died, do you know how

much money he left behind? All of it?

Oh? Yeah, that's truth. It's truth.

It is true.

So isn't it interesting he was hungering and thirsting for

something he never actually got. And so this is what

Jesus is challenging us on, is man, don't waste your

life laying up treasures here on earth. It's just, you know,

he's not saying it's wrong to prepare for the future

and invest. The Bible says wise people make a preparation

for the future, and they leave inheritance to their children's

children and all those kinds of things. But it shouldn't

become an obsession. Just understand you're never going to satisfy

that appetite ly Jesus can. And so he says, you're

wasting your time otherwise.

Yeah. And you know, when you come across sort of

the middle of this chunk, when he talks about the

eye is a lamp of your body, it could seem

a little out there, a little confusing, like why would

Jesus pivot from talking about treasures in heaven and you know,

everything else, And then all of a sudden, he says,

the eye, your eye is a lamp that provides life

for your whole body. What he's talking about is in

the first century, it was an idiom that it was

referring to how your eye is the way you see things,

or your perspective what you're looking at. Yeah, and so

it's really it's your view of That's really what he's saying.

So he's saying, hey, the eye is a lamp that

provides life for your whole body. And he's referring to

the idea of like, your perspective on money versus treasures

in heaven will either fill your body with good things

or bad things. Right, you'll either be filled with enlightenment

or you'll be filled with darkness. And that's really what

he's saying.

Well, I said, one of the most powerful things is

when he says, if the light you think you have

is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is? What he's

saying is what a devastating thing for you to get

to the end of your life and find out you

wasted it.

That's right, because you thought you perceived things correctly.

Yeah, you thought what you saw in life was if

you just had more money, you're gonna be happy, right,

You're gonna have everything you need. And then if you

find out you spent your whole life pursuing something that

was never going to fulfill he says, how sad is that? Right?

How how deep that darkness is?

It's like that saying that says you spent your entire

life trying very hard to climb one more wrong on

the ladder, only to discover at the end of your

life your ladder was leaned up against the wrong building.

Yeah.

Yeah, So it's like, yeah, it's like you work really

hard and then you get to the end. You know,

if the light you have in your body is actually darkness.

How great is that darkness? So yeah, it's it's your

perspective or your view. And so that's why Jesus is saying.

He's saying, like, you know, you have to understand you

can't serve both God and the word mammon is the

word in Greek. Well it's it's not the word in Greek,

but we re translated into mammon. Right, it's not a

Greek word, is it? Man? I don't know, but the

word mamon literally means stuff, right, So, and some translations

say money, but it's money and stuff.

But more accurately translation says you cannot serve God and

be enslaved to money.

Yeah right, yeah right, So a better translation I think

is stuff.

Yeah it was, Oh, go ahead, finished, No, that's it,

that's it. I was in a conversation with a guy

who is very enthusiastic about the Timothy Initiative, and he

gives a lot of money to the Timothy Initiative, and

he he has made just a crazy, insane more money

than you and I can fathom he's.

Made and I can fathom alive.

I'm serious, it's crazy money. And he was talking about

he's an old man now. I'm assuming he's still alive.

I talked with him a couple of years about this,

a couple of years ago, but he talked about the

majority of his life. He was talking about how he

became shifted into this generous thing. He said, you know,

twenty five years ago, I would have never thought about

writing big checks and giving money away and all these

kinds of things. He said. He was. He was obsessed

with more. He literally he said, you know that there's

a passage in the Bible where Jesus warns the rich man.

Rich man goes out and he's being so blessed and

he's overrun with wealth, and he decides he needs to

build more. He's gonna tear down his old barns and

big build bigger barns so he can store more stuff.

And Jesus said, what a fool he is, because he

doesn't know that his soul's gonna be claimed tonight. He's

gonna die right right, and ultimately doesn't matter how bigger

barns are, we're all gonna leave it rightly. Bell stuff.

And he said. The craziest thing was one of his

last things he did before he became a Christian is

he built these giant barns. He has one of the

largest private car collections. And he bought a an old

fifties like diner, one of those metal diners. Oh yeah,

and he built it's a drive through drive in diner.

And he built it a barn big enough to put

that entire diner in and then park all of his

nineteen fifties car collection all the way around it. Good, right, right,

there's millions of dollars just he said, just for a

barn for my toys. Right.

So he built a drive in theater for his car.

A drive in restaurant. I was driving a restaurant, got

it right, one of those old metal driving restaurants, right

with the little bell hops and the girls on the

roller skates kind of thing, the red seats and you know,

all that kinds. That's what he did for all of it.

Just as nineteen He said, that was just where I

parked my nineteen fifties cars. He said, I did the

same thing in another barn for my nineteen sixties cars,

and I did another thing for my nineteen seventies cars.

He said, I built all these barns just for toys,

just toys. And then he said, God changed his life.

Hey, by the way, I think you're right. Maybe it

is more money than I can fathom, because I can't

even imagine.

So then he was talking about it. We were sitting

at lunch in a diner by the way in Naples.

We're sitting at lunch, and he said, and then Jesus

got a hold of my life. And he said, it's

not that I don't enjoy those things. He said, they

just don't mean anything. He said, but I'll be honest

with you, I was becoming aware that they didn't mean anything.

Like I would walk through and I hadn't been in

one of those barns for three months, and everything just

covered in dust. What's the purpose? I got all this

money tied up in this for what? What reasons? Just

to have it? And then and then he said, I

started realizing my adult kids don't want it. And he said,

I thought I've wasted my life. And that began his

journey of looking for purpose and looking for meaning. He

winds up meeting Jesus. Jesus radically transforms his life. He

wound up making some really good investments. He's giving away

all the interest off of all of his big investments,

he's made to only things, and he said, I find

so much more satisfaction doing stuff that matters, because I realized,

when I invest in getting the Gospel places that's never

been that matters. It's never in two thousand years been

the Gospel, never made it to that part of India before,

and I'm investing and make sure he gets there, never

made it to that part of South America, never made

it to that part in the Middle East before, And

I get to be the part of helping make that happen.

He said, that matters, and then he started talking about

children's hospitals and all these other beautiful things that he's

doing around the country, and he said, using my wealth

to help other people, really, I feel like I'm just

doing God's work, whereas before I was just doing my

work and collecting, and he said, I just would feel empty.

I thought it should make me happy. The project made

me happy because it gave me a focus. Once the

project was done, I was sad that it didn't bring

me the happiness I thought i'd bring me. And so

I think it's interesting that what he's comparing here is

what if And this is what I learned from that gentleman.

I'm not saying his name because I don't have his permission.

What I learned from that gentleman was he hungered and

thirsted for stuff and what money could buy, and he

was never satisfied. But when he began to hunger and

thirst after Jesus and his kingdom, he finds so much satisfaction.

He has the same hunger and thirst now for changing

the world as he did just collecting stuff. And I

think that's why Jesus talks about this. You can't serve

both God and money, choose one or the other. What

would be best is if you chose to serve God

and then have your money serve you and God. But

what happens is a lot of times we wind up

serving our money and then we don't find any joy

of saispects. So there's it's really I felt like I

looked into the window of somebody who actually lived these

verses out.

Well, that's amazing. I remember Annie Stanley talking about buying

like a really old, like broken down rust bucket of

a car, and he goes, you know it was when

I did that, He goes, It dawned on me that

when I was a kid, he goes, this was my

favorite car, and he goes, So he goes, Really, what

that means is you can really buy any single car

that you want. All you have to do is way

long enough, right yeah right, He's just by an old

russ bucket rundown version of it, right, So yeah, it is.

It is interesting how uh this, these simple verses can

turn lives upside down because it gets to the heart

of you know, a lot of us in the room.

It means something different for everybody, right, So are you know,

like my, like my, my placing money above God looks

very different than.

That man's absolutely right, right, yeah, you and I can't

fathom that. Yeah, we have an exaggerated version of us, right, right.

We just think one more one more cruise, one more vacation,

it's all we need.

Will kind of be happy, right yeah yeah, because it's

always one more something, one more watch.

Yeah, yeah. I was coveting this watch, by the way,

for quite a while. My wife finally bought it for

me for Christmas. Really yeah, well now I have it, right,

so now what right? Trust me, if she came and

asked me how to spend five hundred dollars again, I

would say, oh, I got something else I want.

Now, right, right?

Isn't funny make all your wildest dreams come true today?

And then tomorrow I have a whole bunch of more

dreams I want. Yeah, yeah, right, yeah yeah.

And I love how Jesus says there your heart will

be also for where your treasure is, the desires of

your heart will also be. And it is true. What

he's saying is he's saying, like, your heart and your

desire follow what you invest in, right, And so it's

like you think about it, like you know somebody who

is not invested in. Well, like I'll give an example

when I bought my wife a new car, right and

by the way, I didn't buy it for her. I

leased it. So let's make that clear. Let's make that

clear right now. But once she had something that she

was invested in, because we're, you know, making pretty good

payments a month, right, she's that's where, that's where she is.

So did you hear me say this on Sunday morning?

I used this as an example, Like back in November,

when I got her this car, I said, well, how

do you like it? And she said, oh, you changed

my life? She goes, I've never had a new car. Ever,

she's fifty four years old or fifty six, she said,

never even had anything new my whole life. But she

loved it so much. She goes, I didn't know that

you can get in your car and you could look

forward to the drive to your work, she goes, because

now she's in like this really nice car, you know.

And so so anyway, the funniest comment was is that

I'd say something about her car that she's named Caroline,

and she says, you know, sometimes at work, I'll just

get up from my desk and I go out and

I'll just check on her.

Go look at the wind, and.

She's doing fine, she's doing good, you know, know the

cars that come near her. Because when you're invested in

something and you have investment in it.

Yeah you care about it, then you care about it.

Right, So I always tell people, I say, hey, if

you want to if you want to invest, if you

want to care more about the mission uh somewhere, then

invest money first. Just write the check.

Oh yeah, that's a great that's the other side of

the conversation.

That's right.

I just told the story about a guy, right right,

Frustrated you're talking the other side. You want to change

your focus, right, I mean change, yeah, change your appetite,

change what you're investing in.

That's right because he says where, he says, where your

treasure is there, where your heart be. Also, what he's

saying is money leads and then your heart follows.

Do you know what that guy? Yeah, he called us

to a meeting in Naples to get a report on

what he was investing in. That's right, that's why we

were there. Yeah, oh we weren't. They're fundraising. We were

there saying, yes, what you what you put your money

because that's where his heart is now, right, he wants

to know. It's so important to him. Yeah, yeah, so

so his his his cars were in barns up in

New Jersey. But he called us to Florida because he's

not there. He doesn't carry anymore, right, he wants to know, Hey,

how's my investment doing. That's exactly so what you invte

Oh dude, that's great. If you want to change your

passions and your focus, invest in that, in the other thing,

and in this situation, invest in the Kingdom and your

heart's gonna invest in your church, invest in doing good

in the community, and your heart's going to pursue follow

after that. Your heart's going to desire that, right, you

want to change your desires invest in it, but get

some skin in the game.

That's right, that's right.

Yeah, that's awesome, dude.

Yeah.

I think for some of our listeners, the only way

they can imagine is they can't have to play golf

anymore unless they're they're playing skins on every hole, right right,

right right. It ramps up the investor. You know this,

You know how much your heart gets involved with the

thing when you've got some skin in the game.

Well, it's like fantasy football, Like we we don't do

it for money, no, no, but we do it a

trophy we get we got a trophy, but we do

a church league. And when we spend all of our time,

all of our effort, that all of a sudden, now

I care who wins the San Francisco game.

Oh yeah, I never I never used to care.

I never used to care because I have invested in

it because where your where your treasure is there your heart.

That's a good that's a good. Uh yeah, that's a

good insight.

Cool.

I like that one.

All right, Well, hey, that looks like it's about our time.

As well, so let's go ahead and wrap it up

and hopefully we'll see you tomorrow on the Bible, guys,